Experimenting at Harvard

By AIMEE L. STERN; Aimee L. Stern is a freelance writer based in Cambridge, Mass., who often reports on business topics.

Published: November 25, 1990

Correction Appended

BOSTON—
ON a crisp fall day recently, the 80 students in an accounting class at the Harvard Business School listened intently as Mary Barth, an assistant professor, described how bonds are classified on a company's balance sheet. The students nodded their understanding. Except for one, Alexei Maximov, who frowned and whispered a question in heavily accented English to his neighbor. He was completely lost.

With his faded blue jeans, scruffy loafers and harried, somewhat frantic expression, Mr. Maximov looks like any other first-year student at the school.

What sets Mr. Maximov apart is that he is one of four Soviet students in the class of 1992, the first Soviet group to pursue M.B.A.'s at Harvard and perhaps at any American business school. And aside from having problems with English, Mr. Maximov and his countrymen are struggling, like the Soviet Union itself is, to learn how to talk business in what amounts to a cram course in capitalism.

For Mr. Maximov, at least, the process already seems to be paying off. "Step by step, I feel as though I'm getting somewhere," said the 31-year-old student, who back home is a research associate at the Soviet Institute of Foreign Economic Relations.

The experimental Harvard program comes at a time of great change and confusion in the Soviet Union as the Kremlin gropes for ways to shift to a market economy and to find a new generation of managers to run its enterprises.

At home, students can now pursue M.B.A.'s for the first time at the Russian-American University, an independent school that opened this fall in classrooms at Moscow State University.

The program here is an outgrowth of a joint research project involving Paul R. Lawrence, a professor of organizational behavior at the business school, and the Soviet Institute of Foreign Economic Relations. Professor Lawrence traveled extensively through the Soviet Union to gather material for his book "Behind the Factory Walls."

When officials at the institute suggested that the business school admit Soviet students, Professor Lawrence helped to win backing for the idea. The business school "tends to be on the cutting edge," he said. "When the political situation changed, it became a natural for us." The program is jointly financed by the Soviet Government and Harvard.

THE first class of Soviet students was selected from a pool of approximately 100 applicants. The four men who made the grade passed a comprehensive English exam and then faced a battery of interviews with Harvard alumni; executives of Zyl, a Soviet truck manufacturer that had been studied by Professor Lawrence; staff from the foreign relations institute, and the business school's director of admissions, Laura Fisher.

The Soviet hopefuls also had to complete the business school's exhaustive 10-page application form.

In the Soviet Union, educational applications only request basic information like date and place of birth. By contrast, the Harvard Business School asks applicants to describe which character traits they wish to change or improve and to analyze an "ethical dilemma" they have experienced first-hand.

One of the four successful applicants, Alexei Kolesnikov, a 27-year-old senior analyst at the U.S.S.R. Chamber of Commerce and Industry, spent two months sweating over his papers. His early drafts contained short, factual answers touting his qualifications. After reading the questions and his replies countless times, Mr. Kolesnikov finally decided Harvard wanted to him to think, not just regurgitate facts. His final draft was calculated and intellectual, written as he thought an American would respond.

Besides Mr. Kolesnikov and Mr. Maximov, those accepted were Joseph Bakaleynick, 38, deputy director general of the Vladimir Tractor Works, and Besik Sikharulidze, 25, who two years ago helped found the Science and Engineering Development Center in Tbilisi, Georgia. All of the men brought their wives and children to the United States for the two-year program.

To limit the students' culture shock and help them develop a grounding in American business, they were each assigned to an internship with an American corporation for at least six months, beginning last January. The companies, which were suggested by business school alumni, amounted to something of a cross-section of American industry: S. C. Johnson & Son Inc. of Racine, Wis., the maker of household products; Johnson & Johnson, the baby care and pharmaceutical company based in New Brunswick, N.J.; Braxton Associates of Boston, a strategic consulting division of Deloitte & Touche, and Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc. of Des Moines, which develops computer systems. [See box.]

With capitalistic work experience under their belts, the Soviet students were ready to confront the rigors of Harvard's famed case-study method of business training. The case studies present actual business problems for which the students devise potential solutions. First-year students read an 12 to 15 cases each week.

THREE of the four Soviet students opted to attend a six-week summer course designed to introduce foreigners to the case-study method. Some business scholars criticize the case method as archaic, but the Soviet students say it offers snapshots of how American companies operate in their industries. To them, it is a good way to master how American managers think.

Correction: December 23, 1990, Sunday A picture caption on Nov. 25 about Soviet students at the Harvard Business School reversed the identities of two students. Besik Sikharulidze was at the right and Aleksei Kolesnikov at the center.